A Caribbean Mystery — Book Review

Here's the sly thing Christie does in this one: she tells you, almost up front, what kind of crime you're dealing with and what kind of person did it. Practically hands it over. And you still don't see the solution coming. That's the trick at the center of the book, and she performs it with the smugness of someone who's been fooling readers for thirty years and knows it.

Miss Marple gets underestimated, by everyone around her, and honestly by some readers too. She's old, she rambles about her garden and the gossip back in St. Mary Mead, people nod politely and stop listening. Which is exactly what makes her lethal. Christie parks her at a sunny West Indies resort where everyone else is on holiday and pleasantly switched off, and Marple is the one person still watching faces. Catching the half-second before someone rearranges an expression.

The setting pulls real weight. She wrote it after her own trip to the West Indies and you can feel the firsthand warmth, the heat, the sea, the slow resort days, which makes the deaths land harder against all that ease. Pretty place, ugly human nature.

Mr. Rafiel is the surprise. A blunt, wheelchair-using millionaire who becomes Marple's unlikely partner, he doesn't patronize her or wave her off, he just deals with her straight, and she clearly finds that a relief. Their scenes have a dry crackle that carries the book through a slightly saggy middle.

Not her most ambitious book. It's short, it does one thing, it does it cleanly in 180 pages. And sometimes a tight puzzle in a beautiful place with a sharp old woman running rings around everyone is exactly enough.